A Comparison of the ‘Prompting Effect’ of Out?of?School with that of In?School Contexts on Certain Aspects of Critical Thinking

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
English The teaching of science closely linked to everyday situations has been strongly recommended in order to achieve stronger motivation, and, in particular for the less intellectually gifted, easier cognitive development. The development of critical‐thinking habits has long been regarded as a task for which science education is particularly suited. Such habits have been said to possess inherent non‐specific transfer value. This opinion rests on the assumption that the logical structures of contextually different situations are perceived as equivalent by pupils. This contention was queried in this study by means of two tests, which permitted: (1) the diagnosis of pupils’ recognition of logical fallacies in everyday, as compared with that in logically equivalent biological situations; and (2) a comparison of pupils’ ‘disposals of unsound proposals’ who had first encountered such proposals in everyday situations, with pupils’ having encountered them in biological situations. The effect exerted by these previously encountered situations was termed ‘prompting effect’. It was found that pupils did not recognize the logical fallacies any better when they were presented in everyday situations, and that pupils from non‐selective schools actually performed significantly worse. The ‘prompting effect’ of everyday situations turned out to be significantly weaker than that of logically equivalent situations. The authors conclude that everyday contextual factors exert a kind of ‘deflecting effect’ (away from the logical task) causing pupils to pay more attention to the topical content of the offered conclusions rather than to the logical structure of the situation. These findings throw some doubt on the validity of recommending that teachers rely on the non‐specific transfer value of intellectual skills (from one contextual area to another).

This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit: